Wind power has emerged as a viable alternative to hydrocarbons and a highly competitive form of renewable energy. As a result, increased production of electrical power from wind energy is a global trend. Wind power is frequently produced by large generators comprising a vertical structure on top of which is located at least one horizontal axis wind turbine that includes one, two, three or multiple rotor blades. Wind power generators or ‘aerogenerators’ are designed to exploit wind energy existing at a particular location and therefore vary in height, control system, number of blades, blade orientation, and blade shape. Due to many reasons, aerogenerators with three blades have become the most widely adopted configuration in large applications.
Aerogenerators are often grouped together in wind parks. Hence, it is common for various aerogenerator blades to be shipped to one specific destination. In such a case, it is very much desirable to efficiently utilize the available transport space in order to minimize the number of transportation vehicles required to transport the plurality of rotor blades to the specific destination site. In addition, due to designs and manufacturing constraints, it is very difficult to manufacture a set of three, or even two, aerogenerators blades with absolutely identical characteristics, for instance, the perfectly identical total weight or profile distribution. Hence, after manufacturing a plurality of aerogenerator blades with the same projected characteristics, the manufacturer usually checks which are the groups of blades (usually sets of three as mentioned hereinabove) that share the most similar characteristics between them (counterbalance) in order to form the set of blades of each aerogenerator.
Furthermore, aerogenerator blades are often of large dimensions and peculiar geometry and thus demand special logistical accommodations during handling, transporting, and storing. In order to accommodate the large dimension of an aerogenerator blade, a transportation system must be compatible with standard equipment such as semi-trailer trucks, trains, ships and cranes. The system must further allow for the transportation and stabilization of blades larger than, for example, about 30 meters (about 99.4 feet) in length and about 2 meters (about 6.6 feet) in width. Moreover, the transportation and stabilization system must provide for adequate protection of the rotor blades, be cost-effective and comply with international transportation regulations.
Many systems and devices have been proposed that address the aforementioned problems associated with the handling, transporting, and storing of wind turbine rotor blades, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,983,844, US Patent Applications Publication Nos. 2005/0180833A1, 2006/0251517A1, 2007/0199847A1 and EP Patent Application Publication No. EP1997681A2. The U.S. Pat. No. 6,983,844 patent, for instance, describes a method of wind turbine blade packing where a first end of a blade is packaged in a first package and a second end of the blade is packaged in a second package, and where the tip of a first blade and the root of a second blade are placed in the immediate vicinity of each other during transportation of the aerogenerator blades.